The tea party was set to take place a week after Beatrice sent out the invitations. The scope was small — deliberately so, accurate to the number of guests invited.
What Beatrice had not anticipated was Sir Brauss quietly taking it upon himself to supervise the decorations.
Rhonda had been assigned to oversee the event — the first to take place in Cornwell Estate since the passing of the Count and Countess — and had been moving through the preparations with the steady efficiency that had become her signature. Then Sir Brauss had appeared in the east sitting room with opinions about the floral arrangements, and Rhonda had found herself in the particular position of being outranked by someone who technically had no authority over her in this matter but carried thirty years of institutional knowledge and wasn't going to pretend otherwise.
She managed it gracefully. Barely.
For his part, Sir Brauss said nothing about overstepping. He simply moved through the room with the quiet certainty of someone who had arranged this kind of thing for the late Countess more times than he could count, and who was not prepared to see it done poorly in her house.
Beatrice, informed of the situation by a mildly exasperated Lisa, decided not to intervene.
She had bigger things to think about. The responses to her invitations had come back promptly — all acceptances, which she noted with quiet satisfaction. Lady Amberville's reply had arrived the very next morning, which was faster than anyone else's.
"I always wanted to get to know you, Lady Cornwell," Lady Amberville had told her back at the Hodgson banquet. Beatrice had wondered where that interest came from. She had never been the centre of any gossip worth repeating. Even her debut had been plain, nothing that stood out from the rest.
Maybe it was the complete lack of mana ability that had made her notable, in its own quiet way. It had always been a sensitive topic, something close to taboo, for as long as she could remember. Most nobles avoided bringing it up at all, less out of courtesy and more out of caution — no one wanted to risk the Cornwell family's displeasure over it. That caution had passed down to their children as well, which made it difficult for Beatrice to have any real friends growing up.
She had never been teased for it. Not once, that she could recall. It was avoidance more than anything — people simply kept their distance, as though her absence of mana were something that might be catching. Herrace's friends had been no different. If anything, they had kept further away than most, since it would have embarrassed him to be seen associating with a mana-less older sister.
---
"Lady Cornwell, how have you been keeping?" Lady Amberville was the first to speak, as Beatrice had already come to expect of her. She had a way of cutting past the usual preliminary silence that most people filled with comments about the weather.
"Well enough, thank you." Beatrice smiled. "I am glad you could all make it."
"Glad to be here — truly." Viscountess Avril Fulhad looked around the sitting room with undisguised appreciation. "This room is something else entirely."
It was. The east sitting room was largely glass — wide panelled windows that ran nearly floor to ceiling, framed in dark ironwork that curled at the edges in the particular style of botanical gothic architecture the previous Countess had favoured. The morning light came through at an angle that caught the trailing vines along the outer walls and threw long green shadows across the interior. It made the whole room feel like something halfway between a manor and a garden.
"The late Countess had wonderful taste," Lady Amberville said, and then glanced at Beatrice with the directness that seemed to come naturally to her. "You take after her, I think. In the way you put things together."
Beatrice accepted the compliment with a small nod and reached for her cup.
The conversation moved at an easy pace after that — the decorations, the Nulang which drew approval from nearly everyone at the table, a brief detour into the subject of a recent wedding that two of the ladies had attended. Beatrice contributed where it was natural to and let it carry itself where it wasn't.
It was Lady Amberville, perhaps twenty minutes in, who tilted her head and said — almost as an aside —
"Have any of you been following the news from the Temple?"
The table shifted slightly. Not uncomfortably — more the way a conversation does when it moves from pleasant to interesting.
"The anomaly?" the young Viscountess said.
"The anomaly." Lady Amberville nodded. "Found in Arveth, of all places. The Saint had barely set foot outside the Empire's borders and the Temple is already in a scramble." She picked up a shortbread and broke it neatly in half. "Four years they made her wait. Four. And now this."
"My mother said the High Priest hasn't made a public statement in over a week," another lady offered. "Which is unusual for him."
"Unusual is one word for it." Lady Amberville's tone was dry. "The Temple hasn't had to deal with two anomalies at once in living memory. Nobody quite knows what the protocol is."
Beatrice set her cup down quietly.
She remembered the women at the pastry shop on Melania Avenue. Their lowered voices, the way one of them had told another to keep her voice down. That had been weeks ago — careful whispers among commoners who knew they were treading close to something they shouldn't be discussing in public. Now the same conversation was happening openly at a noble tea table, which meant the news had moved well past the point where the Temple could contain it.
"What does it mean for the Saint's journey?" she asked.
The question was mild enough. Curious, nothing more.
Lady Amberville looked at her. "That's exactly what nobody seems to agree on. Some say she continues — the anomaly in Arveth isn't her jurisdiction until she reaches it. Others say the Temple will recall her entirely and reconsider." She paused. "And then there are those who think the Temple already knew and delayed her on purpose."
A brief silence settled over the table.
"That would be blasphemy to suggest," the young Viscountess said carefully.
"Yes," Lady Amberville agreed pleasantly. "It would be."
She reached for her tea and said nothing further.
Beatrice looked down at her cup.
An anomaly. The word carried weight in a way that most Temple terminology didn't. They weren't warriors or mana prodigies — they could be anyone. A merchant, a farmer, a noble's second son. Even the anomaly themselves wouldn't know what they were, not until the moment it happened. Each one was born with a single use of mana, just one, and when they spent it — whatever they said in that moment became absolute truth. Not metaphorically. Not as influence or persuasion. The world simply bent to accommodate it, and that was that.
The Temple sent Saints out specifically because only they could identify an anomaly before that moment came. Finding them first was the entire point. An anomaly left unfound was an anomaly that anyone could get to — and whoever was standing close enough when it happened could shape what that single truth turned out to be.
She reached for a caramelised fruit and looked at Lady Amberville with something that was, for once, genuine curiosity.
"If the Saint hadn't reached Arveth yet," she said, "how was the anomaly found at all?"
The table turned toward Lady Amberville, who looked rather pleased to have been asked.
"That's the part nobody can quite agree on." She leaned forward slightly. "The official word from the Temple is that one of their travelling priests identified him. But the story going around is that the anomaly spoke before anyone even knew what he was — something small, apparently, nothing grand — and the world just...accommodated it. People nearby noticed. Word spread before the Temple could get ahead of it."
"So he's already spoken." Beatrice said.
"Already spent it, yes." Lady Amberville nodded. "Which means he's no longer useful to anyone, Temple included. But that's not really the point, is it? The point is that it happened without the Saint anywhere near him. And now the Temple has to explain how their Saint — the one they delayed for four years, the one whose entire purpose is to find these people — missed him entirely."
A small silence followed.
Beatrice reached for her tea cup, her expression settling back into something pleasant and unreadable.
"How unfortunate for them," she said mildly.